Be Nice, Wouldn't It? A distant sequel 1984
by sjowall1452
Summary: Just returned from his daughter's wedding in June, 1984, Ennis hears someone singing in a sweet, slightly drunken voice on his doorstep. Deciding he was mistaken about the drunken, he lets in a visitor. P.S: the Shakespeare does NOT refer to Jack's mom.


Someone was singing in a sweet, slightly drunken voice on Ennis Del Mar's doorstep:

Born, born, born upon this world, the restless heart keeps flying, trying to become the heart of home.

Love, love, love, it picks you up and spins you round, sets you right back down where you belong.

Although it didn't match any of his life experience, he thought to himself, "that's right pretty," and, instead of removing his sports jacket, or going to the door to get rid of the singer, he sat down on one of his two chairs. He was tired. The tune changed, as did the message (if not, perhaps, its most basic content). It was one of those "make love, not war" songs…

Gandhi talked of freedom one night; I said, "Man, we gotta fight,"

He said, "yes, but love's the weapon we must use, for with killing no one wins,

it's with love that peace beings; it takes courage when you're only passing through.

Passing through, passing through…

"That's it," said Ennis, with finality, and went to the trailer door. Without bothering to open it, he said quietly "Why don't _you_ just pass on through, now?"

"Ennis Del Mar?" said the voice, undaunted.

"Yup," he looked at the man through the door. Lord, he was tall! Must be well over 6'. And he had hair like the fellow who didn't talk in those funny movies, what was his name? Harpo. It was rather endearing, and perhaps he had been wrong about the drunkenness. "You lookin' for me?" He had, as often, no idea what time it was, except that it was dark out.

"Yes. My name's Jim Kelly," said the very tall man with the mop of gray hair. Ennis was now sure he'd been wrong: There was just something about a fellow standing on your front step and singing that made you think he was drunk. Especially when he was singing about Peace and Love and stuff like that. As Ennis opened the trailer door and stepped aside to let him in, Jim said "You're a lot more dressed up tonight than I am." Jim wore a soft blue shirt, open at the neck, sandals with no socks and clean feet, Ennis, a dark brown fine wool sports jacket, with even darker brown slacks.

Ennis laughed a little, "Just got back from my daughter's weddin',' and I haven't worn one of these since my own."

Although this statement struck Jim as almost, but not quite, extraordinary, he just sighed, and said, "I have to wear one of those every weekday. Yours—looks nice," he ended, lamely. You couldn't hardly tell a stranger that his new jacket matched his eyes, could you now? Especially one with a wife and daughter? But he was saved the pain of missing his color commentary by having it supplied by Ennis himself:

"My daughter said, when we was pickin' it out, that it matched my eyes, and I had t' get this one, instead of black 'er blue, 'er striped, er anythin'." He smiled briefly, which he could hardly keep from doing when he thought about Junior. Jim smiled, too, but blinked his eyes rapidly, two or three times, as if there were incipient tears in them.

"Sit down, why doncha?" said Ennis, indicating the bed; there was another chair, but it would take a couple of minutes to get it over to this end of the trailer. "So why'd you come lookin' for me?" Ennis asked. His original sense that a drunken man planned to park on his doorstep all night, singing, had at first been replaced by relief, but now he had an uneasy premonition, of the kind he usually only got about the weather. Those were usually right.

"Jack's mother said I would want to talk to you," said Jim.

"Bingo!" thought Ennis. What should he say now? He was pretty good at headstands, but hadn't mastered handstands. Repeat the last few words:

"…would want to talk to me," he said.

"Amazing woman!" said Jim, and suddenly grew animated, using his hands and body to express himself. "I knocked on the door, and she opens the curtains (pretends to open curtains), looks at me, puts her head on one side, like a little bird (puts his head on one side), opens the door and says "Come in, Jim" (opens his hands to either side of his body, questioning, and drops them to the bed he sits on).

"Well, how long since you saw her?"

"I never saw her before in my life!" said Jim, suddenly folding his hands in his lap, as if self-conscious about his miming. Ennis thought that his gestures didn't match his person somehow; had his acquaintance with the human race been broader, he might have thought, "You don't look Jewish, but sometimes you act Jewish. Or maybe Italian.'

"Well, Jack musta told her about ya," suggested Ennis. "How long since ya seen _him?"_ Casually.

"September, 1962, " said Jim promptly. Ennis felt like a ball of yarn unraveling, as he had seen it happen when women dropped them, knitting, a truck dying on the highway, a dog running after your car, losing ground for the last time.

"September, Nineteen sixty-_two?"_

"Yes, probably before you knew him. I sort of-- predate you, actually."

Ennis decided irrationally to change the subject—something he was surprisingly good at: "Yeah, I'd say by about 15 years," he said, looking at the mop of gray hair, "I guess I look about your age, but I'm really the same age as Jack," (well, that didn't last long, he thought) or I was, before he died. Now I guess I'm a year older, maybe more." If he could only stop babbling nonsense!

"You're right," said Jim, I'm 57, and I'm now 6 years older than Jacob, instead of five."

* * *

"That so?" He thinks I'm going to ask him who Jacob is, or was, but I'm not, he said to himself. Oh, the hell with it, he thought suddenly. I give up. And found he meant it: "Jack never mentioned you," he said, mildly.

"Hm… yes, in spite of his openness (he thought he had better leave out the sweetness and loving nature), Jack always struck me as being a sensible fellow," said Jim.

Ennis though of how angry he should feel, or how despairing. Where did that all go? He found that now he'd given up, things were easier: "He could lie real good, too."

"Probably got that from his mother," said Jim.

"His mother? Why?"

"Did you meet his father?" asked Jim.

"Oh yeah, I see what ya mean…yeah, probably was where it came from," Ennis smiled at the solution to a longstanding mystery: how Jack could put more conviction into a casually spoken, one-word lie than any other ten men…

("I can't believe I left my shirt up there." "Yeah…")

"Necessity is—the mother of us all," said Jim, smiling at his own words, as teachers sometimes do. Ennis laughed out loud.

"You a teacher, or somethin'?"

"Yes. High school."

"Had one year, myself… Was you up on Brokeback with Jack about them dead sheep?"

"Yes. I arrived midsummer to arrange the cremation. I was on my way to Denver, and Jacob, and a new job, when Aguirre called in a favor."

"Ya mean he didn't pay you?"

"No I owed him, from my folks...they died owing him."

"What...happened to Jacob?" asked Ennis. He suddenly found he really wanted to know; might as well go whole hog.

"Lung cancer. He never smoked."

"What?"

"That's why they found it so late. Who would think it? Not that catching lung cancer early usually does much good…"

"Yeah, well, I'm waitin' on mine," Ennis took his cigarettes from his pocket, returned them. He hadn't had one for over an hour, and found he didn't want one now, for some reason. "You're a good person to have around…I mean," he looked down "a good—influence."

"I knew what you meant, Ennis," said Jim, whose whole face lit up when he smiled. Ennis noticed this, and took pleasure in it.

"Jack's mother said he died in an accident, maybe. Here?"

"No, in Texas, where his wife and boy lives."

"Lot of that going around in Texas," said Jim.

"What?

"Accidents maybe," said Jim, shortly.

"Well, here too, sometimes." There was a moment of silence. "You from here? What're ya' _doin_' here anyway?"

"Originally, yes. I couldn't stand staying in Denver any longer, so I'm on my way to Brooklyn. I have a job, and a great co-op apartment. It's only 1 ½ rooms, but the ceiling is 15 feet high." Ennis looked up at the low ceiling of his trailer. "I stopped to find out where Jack was. I didn't know he was dead. He was…Jim still remembered the line, "a labor too sweet for words," but tried to steer as far from it as he could, "such fun. That he was." And suddenly, tears spilled from his eyes and ran down his cheeks, in a kind of double mourning. "I'm sorry," he said, taking a Kleenex out of his pants pocket and wiping his eyes and face.

"You apologizin' to me? Yer man is dead, and you come lookin' for an old—friend--, expectin' to find him all grown up, 'n he's dead too." Ennis took the new linen handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and looked at it suspiciously, before wiping his own eyes. "I don't know if yer really s'pposed to use these things," he said, smiling. There were fine lines at he corners of his brown eyes, and his cheekbones stood out, clean and sharp, in a face that was beginning to look craggy. Jim noticed this, and took pleasure in it. The rather sudden change in Ennis had not gone unnoticed by Jim, either, and now he smiled, too, looking directly into the brown eyes with his light blue ones. Ennis continued, hesitantly:

"Jim?'

"Yes?" He unwillingly removed his gaze from Ennis's eyes; it seemed the polite thing to do.

Ennis fidgeted a second, looking for the right words: "A while back, when you was talkin' about meetin' Jack's ma, ya—you started doin' what ya was sayin.' Jim looked blank. "You, ya know, pretend you was openin' the curtains, puttin' yer head t' one side, and then that question thing with yer hands."

"Oh dear. It's Jacob. Jacob's Jewish. Not all Jewish people talk with their hands like that, but he does. Sometimes I feel like he positively _inhabits _me."

It was one of those words that you can sometimes figure out, hearing it for the first time. Ennis smiled half a smile. "Be nice, wouldn't it?" The smile faded immediately, and he looked away; _what had he just said? _He couldn't believe it had come from his mouth.

Jim laughed, a laugh that Ennis thought Jim's students must really like, and said "I asked for that, didn't I?" He continued, soberly, "Jacob had great insurance; that's how I got the co-op."

"What exactly is a co-op?"

"Oh. Well, you live in your own apartment—"

"With a 15-foot ceiling," said Ennis.

"But you own a piece of the building. So you have the responsibilities of a homeowner, without the house," he laughed. "Seriously, it's beautiful."

"Don't have any idea about Jack's insurance; none of my business."

* * *

"So, Ennis. You pretty much know the story of my life, minus college, and a few other things. Were you married when you met Jack?

"Engaged. My wife got smart and divorced me about 9 years ago."

"And Jack?"

"He went down to Texas, for rodeoin', because when we came down from the mountain, I told him I was getting' married, as planned, and probably wouldn't be back the next summer." If he was expecting and censure from Jim, he was disappointed. "By the time we met again, he's married too, with a kid."

"So...you never lived with Jack at all?"

"Sure. Sure I did. About twice a year, for a week at a time, for 20 years."

"Christ!"

"'N I can tell you just why. Because I am the dumbest fuck on earth."

"Which you realized after Jack died."

"...'N..." Ennis stood up deliberately, and took off his sports jacket, walked over to the wardrobe, and opened the right door, wide. He hung the coat on a hanger, which he replaced. Then placed his left hand on the closed left door, his right above the right shoulders of the shirts, spread the fingers ofd both hands, and leaned in against them, his head slightly down. Jim walked silently up behind him, and looked at the inside of the right door, as well as the beautiful back and shoulders presented to him for the first time, covered now only by a white shirt.

"I recognize the blue denim, and the view…"

"Th'other shirt's mine. He stole it, and kept 'em together, all those years, at his old place."

"And you found them there."

"'n his ma, she sees me comin' down with 'em, and she fetches a bag, 'n we put them in it, all rolled up, and she hands it to me, me, smilin' the whole time, like she had the whole thing planned." Ennis had not moved, nor raised his head.

"Maybe she had—this—planned, too," said Jim.

"I thought a that."

Jim touched the blood on the lower sleeve of the white shirt, which he thought he'd ask about—another time. "The outward and visable sign of an inward and spiritual grace." He said. Ennis raised his head, but still did not turn, or stand straight. When he spoke, he was talking to Jim, but seemed to address the wardrobe. He knew what the words meant, exactly, not only because they were true, but also because he had heard them, long ago.

" Yeah. That's what they are. They aren't me 'n Jack together, but they stand for me 'n Jack together."

It's funny: the Catholics use those words to mean "it is," and the Protestants to mean "it stands for; we remember."

"Well, it stands for, and I don't s'pose I'll forget ever," Ennis said, matter-or-fact.

Jim hesitated a moment, and then put his only slightly larger hand over Ennis's right one, the fingers spread, like his, between his. Ennis moved his fingers a little, to show appreciation. The touch of Jim's hand filled him with such longing, he didn't think he could speak. "Jack's" he cleared his throat, "was on the outside; I switched 'em." They both laughed a little, and Jim gathered Ennis's hand inside his.

Ennis raised Jim's hand, still encasing his own, to his mouth, and held it there.

The feeling of Ennis's lips against his hand filled Jim with such longing, he didn't think he could speak—but teachers can always speak. He put his left hand on Ennis's shoulder, gently pulling it, so that Ennis stood upright. Ennis leaned his head back against Jim, and closed his eyes, as Jim put his right arm around Ennis's shoulder, and held his body close against his own, hard But they did not stand that way long, as neither felt it was right to be standing on the floor, or upright anywhere... Ennis could feel the mop of hair on his cheek, and then the cheek itself, wet with tears.

"She loved me for the dangers I had passed; and I loved her, that she did pity them." Jim whispered.

"Somethin' like that," said Ennis, and turned into Jim's embrace, standing almost on tiptoe to hold Jim's bent head, and kiss his mouth. Jim maneuvered both their love and sex-starved selves toward the bed, withmore haste and less organization than he had walked Jack toward a tent, 24 years earlier. The wardrobe door stood open.

* * *

Author's note: The first verse is from Robert Hunter's "Yellow Moon," in the album "Tiger Rose," recorded with and for The Grateful Dead, 1970s; the second is a verse inserted by the Quakers into Leonard Cohen's "Passing Through," in the album "Live Songs" 1950s. The Shakespeare is from Othello's description of his wooing of Desdemona, in _Othello._

The description of all sacraments (especially Communion) was first spoken by St. Augustine, but is frequently used by both Catholics and Protestants, in different ways, as Jim said.


End file.
